The Train Was on Time Read online

  “Olina,” he said softly, and he felt he could speak now, and he knew he would win her because it was dark. A woman can only be won in the dark. Funny, he thought, I wonder if that’s really true? He had the feeling that Olina belonged to him now, had surrendered to him. “Olina,” he said softly, “tomorrow morning I must die. That’s right,” he said calmly, looking at her shocked face, “don’t be scared! Tomorrow morning I must die. You’re the first and only person I’ve told. I am certain. I must die. A moment ago the sun went down. Just this side of Stryy I shall die.…”

  She jumped to her feet and looked at him in horror. “You’re mad,” she whispered, white-faced.

  “No,” he said, “I’m not mad, that’s how it is, you must believe me. You must believe that I’m not mad, that tomorrow morning I shall die, and now you must play me the little Beethoven sonata.”

  She stared at him, aghast, and murmured: “But … but that’s impossible.”

  “I’m absolutely certain and you have told me the last thing I needed to know, Stryy, that’s it. What a terrible name, Stryy. What kind of a word is that? Stryy? Why must I die just this side of Stryy? Why did it have first to be between Lvov and Cernauti … then Kolomyya … then Stanislav … then Stryy. The moment you said Stryy I knew that was the place. Wait!” he called, as she rushed to the door and stood staring at him with terrified eyes.

  “You must stay with me,” he said, “you must stay with me. I’m a human being, and I can’t stand it alone. Stay with me, Olina. I’m not mad. Don’t scream.” He held his hand over her mouth. “My God, what can I do to prove to you I’m not mad? What can I do? Tell me what I can do to prove to you I’m not mad?”

  But she was too frightened to hear what he was saying. She merely stared at him with her terrified eyes, and all at once he realized what a dreadful profession she had. If he were really mad, she would now be standing there helpless. They send her to a room, and two hundred and fifty marks are paid for her because she is the “opera singer,” a very valuable little doll, and she has to go to that room like a soldier going to the front. She has to go, even though she is the opera singer, a very valuable little doll. A terrible life. They send her to a room and she has no idea who is inside. An old man, a young one, an ugly man or a handsome one, bestial or innocent. She has no idea and goes to the room, and now there she is, frightened, just frightened, too frightened to hear what he is saying. It is truly a sin to go to a brothel, he thought. They send girls to a room, just like that.… He gently stroked the hand he was restraining her by, and strangely enough the fear in her eyes began to recede. He went on stroking it, and felt as if he were stroking a child. I’ve never desired a woman as little as this one. A child … and suddenly he saw that poor grubby little girl in a suburb of Berlin, playing among prefabs where there were some scrawny gardens, and the other kids had taken her doll and thrown it into a puddle … and then run away. And he had bent down and pulled the doll out of the puddle; it was dripping with dirty water, a dangling, frayed, cheap ragdoll, and he had to stroke the child for a long time and try and console her for her poor doll having got wet … a child.…

  “You’re all right now, aren’t you?” he said. She nodded, and there were tears in her eyes. He led her gently back to the chair. The dusk had become heavy and sad.

  She sat down obediently, keeping her still somewhat nervous gaze on him. He poured her some wine. She drank. Then she sighed deeply. “God, how you scared me,” she said, and thirstily gulped down the rest of her wine.

  “Olina,” he said, “you’re twenty-three now. Just ask yourself whether you’re going to be twenty-five, will you?” he urged her. “Say to yourself: I am twenty-five years old. That’s February 1945, Olina. Try, think hard.” She closed her eyes, and he saw from her lips that she was saying something under her breath that in Polish must mean: February 1945.

  “No,” she said, as if waking up, and she shook her head. “There’s nothing there, as if it didn’t exist—how odd.”

  “You see?” he said. “And when I think: Sunday noon, tomorrow noon, that doesn’t exist for me. That’s the way it is. I’m not mad.” He saw her close her eyes again and say something under her breath.…

  “It’s odd,” she said softly, “but February 1944 doesn’t exist either.…”

  “Oh for heaven’s sake,” she broke out, “why won’t you make love? Why won’t you dance with me?” She moved swiftly to the piano and sat down. And then she played: “I’m dancing with you into heaven, the seventh heaven of love.…”

  Andreas smiled. “Come on, play the Beethoven sonata … play a.…”

  But again she was playing: I’m dancing with you into heaven, the seventh heaven of love. She played it very softly, as softly as dusk was now sinking into the room through the open curtains. She played the sentimental tune unsentimentally, which was strange. The notes sounded crisp, almost staccato, very soft, almost as if suddenly she were turning this brothel piano into a harpsichord. Harpsichord, thought Andreas, that’s the right instrument for her, she ought to play the harpsichord.…

  The popular tune she was now playing was no longer the same, yet it was the same. What a lovely tune it is, thought Andreas. It’s fantastic, what she can make of it. Perhaps she studied composition too, and she’s turning this trivial tune into a sonata hovering in the dusk. Now and again, at intervals, she would play the original melody again, pure and clear, unsentimentally: I’m dancing with you into heaven, the seventh heaven of love. Now and again, between the gentle, playful waves, she allowed the theme to rear up like a granite cliff.

  It was almost dark now, it was getting chilly, but he didn’t care; the music sounded so beautiful that he wasn’t going to get up and close the window; even if subzero air were to come in through the window from the gardens of Lvov, he wasn’t going to get up.… Maybe I’m dreaming it’s 1943 and I’m sitting here in a Lvov brothel wearing the gray tunic of Hitler’s army; maybe I’m dreaming, maybe I was born in the seventeenth century or the eighteenth, and I’m sitting in my mistress’s drawing-room, and she’s playing the harpsichord, just for me, all the music in the world just for me … in a chateau somewhere in France, or a little schloss in western Germany, and I’m listening to the harpsichord in an eighteenth-century drawing-room, played by someone who loves me, who is playing just for me, just for me. The whole world is mine, here in the dusk; very soon the candles will be lit, we won’t call a servant … no, no servant … I shall light the candles with a paper spill, and I shall light the paper spill with my paybook from the fire in the hearth. No, there’s no fire burning in the hearth. I shall light the fire myself, the air from the garden, from the grounds of the chateau, is damp and cool; I shall kneel by the hearth, tenderly place the kindling in layers, crumple each page of my paybook, and light the fire with the matches she noted down. Those matches will be paid for with the Lvov mortgage. I shall kneel at her feet, for she will be waiting with tender impatience for the fire to be lit in the hearth. Her feet have grown cold at the harpsichord; she has sat at the open window in this damp, cool air for a long, long time, playing for me, my sister, she has been playing so beautifully that I wouldn’t get up to close the window … and I shall make a lovely bright fire, and we won’t need any servants, no indeed, no servants! Just as well the door is locked.…

  1943. A terrible century; what awful clothes the men will be wearing; they will glorify war and wear dirt-colored clothes in the war, while we never glorified war, war was an honest craft at which now and again a man got cheated of his rightful wages; and we wore cheerful clothes when we worked at this craft, just as a doctor wears cheerful clothes and a mayor … and a prostitute; but those people will be wearing horrible clothes and will glorify war and fight wars for their national honor: a terrible century; 1943.…

  We have all night, all night. Dusk has only just fallen in the garden, the door is locked, and nothing can disturb us; the whole chateau is ours; wine and candles and a harpsichord! Eight hundred and fifty m
arks without the matches; millions lying around Nikopol! Nikopol! Nothing! … Kishinev? Nothing! … Cernauti? Nothing! … Kolomyya? Nothing! … Stanislav? Nothing! Stryy … Stryy … that terrible name that is like a streak, a bloody streak across my throat! In Stryy I’m going to be murdered. Every death is a murder, every death in war is a murder for which someone is responsible. In Stryy!

  I’m dancing with you into heaven, the seventh heaven of love!

  It was not a dream at all, a dream ending with the last note of that melodic paraphrase, it merely tore the frail web that had been cast over him, and now for the first time, by the open window, in the cool of the dusk, he realized he had been crying. He had neither known it nor felt it, but his face was wet, and Olina’s hands, soft and very small, were drying his face; the rivulets had run down his face and collected in the closed collar of his tunic; she undid the hook and dried his neck with her handkerchief. She dried his cheeks and around his eyes, and he was grateful that she said nothing.…

  A strangely sober joy filled him. The girl switched on the light, closed the window with averted face, and it was possible she had been crying too. This chaste happiness is something I have never known, he thought, as she crossed to the closet. I’ve always only desired, I’ve desired an unknown body, and I’ve desired that soul too, but here I desire nothing.… How strange that I have to find this out in a Lvov brothel, on the last evening of my life, on the threshold of the last night of my earthly existence that is to come to an end tomorrow morning in Stryy with a bloody streak.…

  “Lie down,” said Olina. She indicated the little sofa, and he noticed that she had switched on an electric kettle in that mysterious closet.

  “I’ll make some coffee,” she said, “and until it’s ready I’ll go on with my story.”

  He lay down, and she sat beside him. They smoked, the ashtray lying conveniently on a stool so they could both reach it. He barely needed to stretch out his hand.

  “I needn’t tell you,” she began quietly, “that you musn’t ever speak to anyone about it. Even if you … if you were not to die—you would never betray my secret. I know that. I had to swear by God and all the saints and by our beloved Poland that I would never tell a soul, but if I tell you it’s as if I were telling myself, and I can’t keep anything from you any more than I can keep anything from myself!” She stood up and poured the bubbling water very slowly and tenderly into a small coffeepot. Each time she paused for a few seconds she would smile at him before continuing to pour, very slowly, and now he could see she had been crying too. Then she filled the cups that were standing beside the ashtray.

  “The war broke out in 1939. In Warsaw my parents were buried under the ruins of our big house, and there I was all alone in the garden of the Conservatory, where I had been flirting, and the director was taken away because he was a Jew. Well, I just didn’t feel like going on with the piano. The Germans had somehow or other raped us all, every single one of us.” She drank some coffee, he took a sip too. She smiled at him.

  “It’s funny that you’re a German and I don’t hate you.” She fell silent again, smiling, and he thought, it’s remarkable how quickly she’s surrendered. When she went to the piano she wanted to seduce me, and the first time she played I’m dancing with you into heaven, the seventh heaven of love, it was still far from clear. While she was playing she cried.…

  “All Poland,” she went on, “is a resistance movement. You people have no idea. No one suspects how big it is. There is hardly a single unpatriotic Pole. When one of you Germans sells his pistol anywhere in Warsaw or Krakow, he should realize that in doing so he’s selling as many of his comrades’ lives as there is ammunition in that pistol. When anywhere, anywhere at all,” she went on passionately, “a general or a lance-corporal sleeps with a girl and so much as tells her they didn’t get any rations near Kiev or Kishinev or some such place, or that they retreated only two miles, he never suspects that this is jotted down, and that this gladdens the girl’s heart more than the twenty or two hundred and fifty zlotys she’s been paid for her seeming surrender. It’s so easy to be a spy among you people that I soon got disgusted with it. All one had to do was get on with it. I don’t understand it.”

  She shook her head and gave him a look almost of contempt.

  “I don’t understand it. You’re the most garrulous people in the world, and sentimental down to your fingertips. Which army are you with?”

  He told her the number.

  “No,” she said, “he was from a different one. A general who used to come and see me here sometimes. He talked like a sentimental schoolboy who’s had a bit too much to drink. ‘My boys,’ he would groan, ‘my poor boys!’ And a little later on the old lecher would be babbling away to me about all kinds of things that were vitally important. He’s got a lot of his poor boys on his conscience … and he told me a lot of things. And then … then,” she hesitated, “then I’d be like ice.…”

  “And were there some you loved?” asked Andreas. Funny, he thought, that it should hurt to know there were some she might have loved.

  “Yes,” she said, “there were some I really loved, not many.” She looked at him, and he saw she was crying again. He took her hand, sat up, and poured coffee with his free hand.

  “Soldiers,” she said softly. “Yes. There were some soldiers I loved … and I knew it made no difference that they were Germans whom actually I ought to have hated. You know, when I gave myself to them I felt I was no longer part of the terrible game we’re all playing, the game I had an especially big part in. The game of sending others to their death, men one didn’t know. You see,” she whispered, “some fellow, a lance-corporal or a general, tells me something here, and I pass on the information—machinery is set in motion, and somewhere men die because I passed on that information, do you see what I mean?” She looked at him out of frantic eyes. “Do you see what I mean? Or take yourself: you tell some fellow at the station: Take that train, bud, rather than that one—and that’s the very train the partisans attack, and your buddy dies because you told him: Take that train. That’s why it was so wonderful just to give oneself to them, just abandon oneself, and forget everything else. I asked them nothing for our mosaic and told them nothing, I had to love them. And what’s so terrible is that afterwards they’re always sad.…”

  “Mosaic,” asked Andreas huskily, “what’s that?”

  “The whole espionage system is a mosaic. Everything’s assembled and numbered, every smallest scrap we get hold of, until the picture’s complete … it slowly fills out … and many of these mosaics make up the whole picture … of you people … of your war … your army.…”

  “You know,” she went on, looking at him very seriously, “the terrible part is that it’s all so senseless. Everywhere it’s only the innocent who are murdered. Everywhere. By us too. Somehow I’ve always known that—” she looked away from him—“but, you know what frightens me is that I didn’t grasp it fully till I walked into this room and saw you. Your shoulders, the back of your neck, there in the golden sunshine.” She pointed to the window where the two chairs were.

  “I know that now. When they sent me here, when Madame told me: ‘There’s someone waiting for you in the bar, I don’t think you’ll get much out of him but at least he pays well’—as soon as she said that I thought: I’ll get something out of him all right. Or it’s someone I can love. Not one of the victims, because there are only victims and executioners. And when I saw you standing over there by the window, your shoulders, the back of your neck, your stooping young figure as if you were thousands of years old, it came to me for the first time that we also only murder the innocent … only the innocent.…”

  The soundlessness of that crying was terrible. Andreas rose, stroked the nape of her neck in passing, and went to the piano. Her eyes followed him in astonishment. Her tears dried up at once, she watched him as he sat there, on the piano stool, staring at the keys, his hands spread apprehensively, and across his forehead there was a te
rrible furrow, an anguished furrow.

  He’s forgotten me, she thought, he’s forgotten me, how awful it is that they always forget us at the very moment when they are really themselves. He’s not thinking about me any more, he’ll never think about me any more. Tomorrow morning he will die in Stryy … and he’ll waste no more thoughts on me.

  He is the first and only one I’ve loved. The first. He is absolutely alone now. He is unbelievably sad and alone. That furrow across his forehead, it cuts him in two, his face is pale with terror, and he has spread his hands as if he had to grasp some dreadful animal.… If he could only play, if he could only play, he would be with me again. The first note will give him back to me. To me, to me, he belongs to me … he is my brother, I am three days older than he is. If he could only play. There’s some monstrous cramp inside him, spreading his hands, turning him deathly pale, making him fearfully unhappy. There’s nothing left of all I wanted to give him with my playing … with my story, there’s nothing of all that with him now. It’s all gone, he’s alone now with his pain.

  And indeed, when all at once he attacked the keys with a fierce rage in his face, he raised his eyes, and his eyes went straight to her. He smiled at her, and she had never seen such a happy face as that face of his above the black surface of the piano in the soft yellow lamplight. Oh how I love him, she thought. How happy he is, he’s mine, here in this room till morning.…